Every guide to earning a commission starts in the same place: tell your friends. That advice assumes a contact list you do not have. Maybe you moved to Zagreb last year, maybe you are the only person in the family who is online, maybe the people you know are the same people everyone else is already messaging. Starting from zero is a normal position, and it is not the part that actually blocks people.
The part that blocks people in Croatia is money arriving. A commission you cannot receive cleanly is not income, it is a problem waiting for January. Croatian rules on this are unusually specific, and they push in a direction most beginners do not expect: the question of who is allowed to pay you matters more, at the start, than the question of who is willing to.
While you sort that out, apps such as I am Beezy pay you for viewing content — videos, articles, advertisements — which puts small amounts into an account without requiring you to persuade a single person of anything.
Why does it matter who pays you, not just who buys?
In most countries you receive money and then work out what to declare. Croatia reverses that for occasional income, and the reversal is written into the rules rather than left to custom.
On drugi dohodak, the payer does the paperwork
Occasional income that does not come from an employer or a registered trade falls into the category the tax administration calls drugi dohodak. The Porezna uprava states that the obligation to calculate, withhold and pay both income tax and contributions sits with the payer, not with the person receiving the money — "obveznik obračuna, obustave i uplate poreza na dohodak i doprinosa je isplatitelj primitka". Pension contributions take 10 % of the gross amount, or 7.5 % where the recipient also belongs to the second pillar, and the income tax applies to what is left after that deduction.
A foreign platform is not a Croatian isplatitelj
That rule works beautifully when the payer is a Croatian company, a hotel, an agency or a registered trade. It does nothing at all when the payer sits in Ireland, Cyprus or the United States, because a foreign affiliate network is not an isplatitelj under Croatian law and will simply transfer you a gross amount. The money is yours either way. The difference is that in the second case nobody has settled anything on your behalf, and you are the one who has to work out what to do with it.
What that changes when your contact list is empty
It changes where you start looking. Someone with no network is usually told to sign up to the biggest international programme available, because it is the easiest to join. In Croatia the easier first commission is frequently the local one: a rental agency in Zadar, an accountancy office in Osijek, an equipment supplier in Rijeka. Smaller volumes, but a payer who already runs payroll and for whom paying you correctly is a routine line rather than an unusual event.
What does a first commission cost you to receive?
The other route is to register a trade — an obrt — and invoice for your work. It is the standard answer given in Croatia, and for small beginnings it is frequently the wrong one, for a reason that is entirely arithmetic.
The paušalni obrt has a fixed monthly floor
Contributions for a paušalni obrt are calculated on a fixed monthly base of 797.20 € for 2026, whatever you actually earn. That produces 119.58 € a month for the first pension pillar at 15 %, 39.86 € for the second pillar at 5 %, and 131.54 € for health insurance at 16.5 %. Those three lines add up to just under 291 € every month, and they are due whether your commissions that month were 800 € or nothing at all (Porezna uprava, Obrtnici paušalisti).
The flat-rate brackets move in steps, not smoothly
The taxable base is set by bracket rather than in proportion to what you earn: 1 695 € for receipts up to 11 300 €, then 2 295 €, 2 985 €, 4 590 €, 6 000 €, 7 500 €, and 9 000 € for the top band between 50 000 € and 60 000 €. Crossing a bracket boundary raises your base in one jump. The rate applied to that base is not a national figure, because Croatian income tax rates are decided by each municipality — so do not accept a single annual tax amount quoted as if it applied everywhere.
Sixty thousand euros is two thresholds at once
The 60 000 € ceiling on the flat-rate trade is the same figure as the compulsory entry threshold into the VAT system, where the standard rate is 25 %. Crossing it therefore changes two things simultaneously. That is a long way from a beginner's first commission, but it is worth knowing before you build a plan around growth.
| Question | Occasional income (drugi dohodak) | Flat-rate trade (paušalni obrt) |
|---|---|---|
| Who settles tax and contributions | The payer, by law | You, on your own account |
| Cost when you earn nothing this month | Nothing | Just under 291 € in contributions |
| Pension contribution | 10 % of gross, or 7.5 % with the second pillar | 15 % plus 5 % on a base of 797.20 € |
| Health contribution | Not stated on the page reached | 16.5 % on the same base, 131.54 € a month |
| Works with a foreign payer | Poorly — no Croatian payer to withhold | Yes, you invoice directly |
| Upper limit | None stated | 60 000 € of receipts, and VAT above it |
Read the table as a sequencing tool
Nothing in it says the trade is a bad idea. It says the trade is a bad first step. Below a few thousand euros a year, the fixed monthly floor eats the commission before you see it. The sensible order is to earn first through payers who can handle the withholding, and to register once the volume makes the floor look small.
Where do you find a first payer with no contacts?
Croatia makes this easier than its size suggests, because the country runs on two completely different calendars and you can aim at whichever one is currently short of people.
Two economies, one small country
In 2025 the country recorded 94 820 989 overnight stays, of which 26 711 796 fell in August and 650 315 in January (DZS, Turizam u 2025.). August is more than forty times January. On the coast that means a wall of demand between June and September and near silence from November, while Zagreb barely moves across the year — in January the capital is actually the leading destination in Croatia, with 20.9 % of national overnight stays.
The interior is where the year is flat
The employment picture matches. In the first quarter of 2026 the employment rate in the City of Zagreb reached 74.4 %, the highest in the country, while unemployment in Panonska Hrvatska — Slavonia, around Osijek — stood at 7.6 %, the highest, against 3.0 % in the north (DZS). Someone starting with no network in Osijek is working a different market from someone starting in Split, and the two need different offers.
One resident in three receives a pension
There were 1 233 886 pension recipients in June 2026 for a population of 3 866 233, with an average pension of 644.78 € a month (HZMO, DZS). Beginners consistently overlook this group because it is not the audience marketing talks about. It is a third of the country, it has time, and it is far more likely to act on a recommendation from a person than on an advertisement.
Covering the quiet months with I am Beezy
The gap between deciding to do this and receiving a first commission is usually measured in weeks, and it is the stretch where most people give up.
What the app actually pays for
With I am Beezy you view content — videos, articles, advertisements — and each view generates earnings, paid out to your usual payment method. It asks nothing of your contact list, which is exactly why it works as a bridge while a referral arrangement is still being set up. Active users report a range of 5 to 15 € a day.
Where the money lands matters here too
Nineteen credit institutions are licensed by the Hrvatska narodna banka and issue an IBAN beginning HR. Revolut, N26 and Wise are not on that register and operate here under freedom of services with a foreign IBAN, which remains perfectly legal inside SEPA but is occasionally refused by Croatian payers and offices. If you expect to be paid by a Croatian company as well as by an app, an HR account removes a category of problem in advance.
| Period | Reported earnings range | What it covers in Croatia |
|---|---|---|
| Per day | 5 – 15 € | A single ZET ticket bought in advance costs 0.53 € for 30 minutes |
| Per week | 35 – 105 € | A ZET seven-day pass is 19.91 € |
| Per month | 150 – 450 € | A general monthly ZET pass is 47.78 € |
Registering a trade later: three routes and no fee
When the volume does justify it, the mechanics are less forbidding than the monthly cost suggests, and the state has removed one obstacle entirely.
Three categories, and only one is open to everybody
Croatian law distinguishes slobodni obrti, which require no professional examination, vezani obrti, which require a certificate of professional competence, suitable secondary qualifications or a master craftsman's examination, and povlašteni obrti, which may only be carried on under a licence (gov.hr, Otvaranje obrta u Hrvatskoj, consulted 16 August 2026). Introduction and referral work generally sits in the first group.
Registration is free and can be done online
The official government page states plainly that there is no longer any registration fee — "Nema (više se ne plaća)". You register through the START platform, through the e-Obrt system, or in person at the competent administrative body of your county or of the City of Zagreb. The Hrvatska obrtnička komora publishes its own beginner's guidance alongside these routes.
One year to actually begin
If you do not state a start date when registering, you must begin operating within one year of registration. That matters for anyone tempted to register early "to be ready": an unused registration is not a neutral placeholder, it is a clock running alongside a monthly contribution bill.
The first three moves
Do them in this order and the sequencing problem solves itself. First, open or confirm an account with an HR IBAN at one of the nineteen licensed banks, because everything else waits on it. Second, approach two or three Croatian payers rather than one large foreign platform, and ask them directly how they treat an introduction fee — a payer who handles the withholding is worth more than a payer who offers a slightly higher rate. Third, leave the trade registration alone until the money is regular enough that 291 € a month is a small share of it. Meanwhile, keep something running that pays without a network: signing up on I am Beezy costs nothing and puts the first euros in while you build the rest.
